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A priceless book on Thomas Friedman of the New York Times by Belén Fernández

If you are a fan of columnist Thomas Friedman of the New York Times,  then you will want to read this interview with the author of a book on Friedman titled “The Imperial Messenger: Thomas Friedman at Work,” by Belén Fernández, published by Verso this year (2012). An interview with the author appears in Truthout. In this book, one that surprises me simply because it should have been written long ago (but let’s be grateful to Belén Fernández for putting this together), the author masterfully documents the incomprehensible inconsistencies that are a regular feature of Friedman’s column and his life’s work. Friedman’s objective is to make you happy that you are part of a glorious American Empire and that Free Trade is the wave of our future and the golden key to our past. Agonizing as those narratives may be, the most frustrating part of Friedman’s articles are that few people check his facts. But no one has done that better than Fernández. Here I give you just one of the stories about Friedman from the book. If you have read Friedman you know that he likes to summarize the feelings of an entire nation, even though he talks to very few citizens of any country and apparently gets most of his information by talking to cab drivers.

• [Taken from the interview with Belén Fernández in Truthout: link above]

• “People often joke that the only normal human beings Friedman converses with – outside his usual circle of CEOs and national leaders – are cab drivers. In fact Friedman has a certain insistence on speaking on behalf of the world’s inhabitants without actually speaking to them first. Readers are instructed to “just ask any Indian villager” for confirmation that U.S.-directed globalization is desirable, and are informed in 1999 that it is “stupid” to oppose globalization: “The [anti-WTO] Seattle protesters need to understand that. The people of Sri Lanka already do.” The latter insight is gleaned from Friedman’s chat with the owner of a Sri-Lanka based Victoria’s Secret underwear factory, who obviously does not qualify as “the people of Sri Lanka.”"

As a corporatist newspaper, the New York Times and columnist Thomas Friedman fit each other like glove and hand and the fact that politicians, like Barack Obama consult with Friedman, gives him panache, swagger and sufficient celebrity status to keep doing and saying what he has been doing and saying all along. Whether this book by Fernández changes the conversation about Friedman remains to be seen, but it’s a good start.  Friedman is a Minnesota boy. He is very popular in this state, though at least one citizen of this community never reads him because his articles are vacuous, nonsensical and very misleading.  Perhaps his best work is achieved with the titles of his books, but then again “The World is Not Flat.”

RFM

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Fig. 1 Planet Earth (NASA)

Every educated person on the planet has heard about the threats to human existence imposed by Global Warming. Yet, few of us are knowledgeable enough to explain the basic mechanisms that determine our climate, especially when talking to those among whom are doubting members of the choir. Understanding the essential elements of Global Warming requires effort and an intellectual expenditure, but you can converse intelligently on the subject, while stopping short of explaining the situation on the basis of a thermodynamic theory of equilibrium. Besides, the earth’s climate has never truly been in any form of equilibrium–some positive or negative driving force or energy imbalance has always been trying to change our climate, though, until now, such changes have taken place over millenia, not over the two hundred plus years of the industrial revolution.  Our climate has always been changing, even though the time constants for change are way beyond a human lifetime, and lie properly scaled and recorded within the geological and paleoclimatological record, which gives up its secrets slowly. But once properly deciphered that record reveals a surprisingly coherent history for those willing to put the effort into interpreting the scrolls, or to be more accurate, deciphering the core drillings of oceans and glaciers. Of course, we don’t yet have a complete story. There are large gaps in our knowledge, but we know enough already to be mesmerized by our planetary history and the forces that have shaped our climate. And we should know enough to be alarmed and very wary about our future.

It is now clear that never before in our climate history have we witnessed the kind of experiment now underway–the forcing of our planet to go through something it has never experienced before–a sharp, man-made increase in atmospheric carbon dioxide that is now taking place and pushing us towards a climatological precipice that we might not be able to escape. But if we act quickly, this experiment is still under our control, depending on whether we can muster the political will to curb our use of fossil fuels and restore energy balance to keep the planet as it was, with atmospheric carbon dioxide at 350 parts per million (ppm) or less ; it is now at 387 ppm and rising at a rate of about 2 ppm per year. The alternative is that we run the risk of higher levels of carbon dioxide that will trigger the melting of Greenland and the polar ice caps and eventually raise our sea level by 270 feet! We are probably not at risk for a sea level increase of that magnitude during this century, but we do run the risk of having this kind of sea level rise take place, and once it starts, there will be nothing we can do to stop it. Not only will this massive ice melting proceed out of our control, it will cool the local regions where the melting takes place, impact our weather systems and change the driving forces for oceanic currents. The emergency we must address now has been created by the fact that the carbon dioxide we have put into the atmosphere has a very long half-life and its actions on our planet will be with us for a  very long time. Couple this reality to the fact that we are already seeing weather patterns that reflect Global Warming and you inescapably conclude that our short-term climate does not look good–it will inescapably be more violent. But, we can still do something for the long-term, by acting soon and now is not too early. There is little doubt that if we continue to burn fossil fuels through a business-as-usual mode, our planet will be markedly different and our planetary future will be seriously in doubt. In many ways, that’s the shock–not only that the climate is never in equilibrium, but that it is also super-sensitive to the very fuels we have chosen as our cheapest form of energy. For too long we have assumed constancy in our climate lives: that luxury has now gone, at least the assumption part of it.

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In view of the recent death of Chalmers Johnson (November 20, 2010; age 79),  I decided to re-issue last year’s book endorsement that originated from Bill Moyer’s PBS show of December 2009: his book recommendation was the last of Johnson’s trilogy “Nemesis: the Last Days of the American Republic.” I have commented many times on Johnson’s books, and reviewed “Nemesis“ shortly after it came out. His trilogy began with “Blowback” followed by“Sorrows of Empire.” These books were instrumental in shaping my own views about the danger of our militarism and how we are going broke trying to feed the false image we have of ourselves as the world’s only superpower and the continued need to assert global American hegemony by unearthing ever new false enemies. You cannot take Johnson lightly on this subject–he was an inside adviser for the CIA and was at one time was quite conservative–hence his admission to the inner circle. As our militarism towards the outside world continues, the internal costs remain high as we are falling behind in almost every category of a modern, civilized society including health, percentage of our population living in poverty and even  life expectancy, as a result of our healthcare system or lack thereof. Yes, we continue to have the world’s largest economy, but China is scheduled to overtake the bragging rights for that one in fifteen years or so. What then will be our claim to world supremacy? Well, we will still have bragging rights to the largest number of military bases around the world–more than 650 we are willing to admit to. Chalmers Johnson did have an encouraging suggestion as a way for us to avoid our almost certain fate of decline and bankruptcy, by doing what the British did in the twentieth century. They gave up their colonial empire and, though the road was bumpy and had many moments of uncertainty, they survived intact with an identifiable culture, coupled to  diminished expectations for ruling the globe. The British are currently going through rough times, in part because they followed the American model a little too closely.

In my opinion, it is not possible to read Chalmers Johnson’s books and not be alarmed and sobered by the third world country attitude that drives our own internal development. It seems like the true sacrifice we make for ruling the world is the increasing destruction of our own social fabric.  A poll taken of Americans  in August of this year revealed that nearly 2/3 of those who responded thought that the United States was in a period of decline. So, where is the investment in our infrastructure and our education system, the things that we will need if we are ever going right our badly tilting ship? It seems the Tea Party has come along at just the right time to, if anything, accelerate our national  decline. What’s the antidote? America must reinvent itself, but we had better get started. It’s not too early. Right now it is the politics of distraction that prevent us from seeing with any clarity the challenge in front of us. Rosy the riveter is not yet on the scene!

RFM

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